Python's Lisp heritage

[Carl Banks]

Grant Edwards wrote:
> In article <Xns91F67C40EB0E0lumberjack at 216.148.53.83>, Lumberjack wrote:
>> aahz at pythoncraft.com (Aahz) wrote:
>>> What's amazing about Lisp is that it's still in many ways on the cutting
>>> edge of computer science.
>> 
>> Perhaps you should name these "many ways". Taken at face value, your 
>> statement pretty much claims that computer science hasn't progressed in 40 
>> some years. I can at least agree with that statement. Of course the 
>> "science" in "computer science" is pure bovine excrement. If you can't or 
>> wont measure it, it isn't science. "Computer religion" or "computer cults" 
>> would better capture the reality.
> 
> It's part math, part crafstmanship.  I agree it isn't science.
> As a general rule, no field with "science" in its name is.

Computer programming is not science.

The study of algorithms, their properties, etc., is science.
Implementing a quicksort algorithm is not science, but studying its
properties is.

As long as we restrict computer science to the study of computer
algorithms and such, then computer science is science.  If we use
computer science as a sexy synonym for computer programming, then it
isn't.


Don't even get me started on whether is computer engineering is
engineering.


-- 
CARL BANKS                                http://www.aerojockey.com
"Nullum mihi placet tamquam provocatio magna.  Hoc ex eis non est."